This week our hemp rope making machine arrived from China, we built the frame for our new “ high tunnel” a Waaginoogin, and we made the press- big time; both the Star Tribune and the cover of Hemp Magazine. We’re proud of our work and wanted to share all of this with you.

Winona’s Hemp and Heritage Farm is growing. The winter seemed endless for us here in Northern Minnesota, temperatures ranged far, and the storms were brutal. We are grateful for the warmth of this time.

Spring is here, summer now, and the crops are in. More are coming. Cannabis, or hemp is one of many crops we grow here, to produce cordage, and soon textiles.

This year, we are growing fifty female CBD plants, all to offer food, textiles and health products. We also grow corn, beans, squash, potatoes, tobacco and a host of garden vegetables. We are interested in growing food for future generations- Indigenous foods, biodiverse foods, and foods in a time of climate change. Read more

In early May, I traveled to Enbridge’s Shareholder meeting in Calgary, in Alberta Canada. Outside, laid off oil workers screamed, “Build that Pipe” over a bullhorn, and asked people to honk if they supported Canadian oil. Those tar sands workers will likely never have jobs in the industry again – economists, and even the oil fairy government of Alberta, are sobering up to the Boom Bust economy of energy projects. It’s the bust and there is no boom in sight. That’s the problem. It’s really a race to the bottom and to the end ­– that is to be the last tar sands pipeline. For the past four years Canada has been trying to run tar sands pipelines through the US, to the Coast, to anywhere, and it has not gone well. And it’s not going to, and here are the reasons why …

The time you kill a Wiindigo is in the summer. When the warmth of the sun returns to the north country. There’s a proverb, “They tried to bury us, but they didn’t know we were seeds.” It’s time to plant the seeds.

Winona: Go places that need you. Go back to your communities. Be coherent, be critical, be connected, use your privilege. You have a lot of privilege going to UW. I think the world of these guys, they’re so smart you know? And I tell them, you’re my retirement plan. Ya’ll get going. I don’t want to be stressed out, you know? I want to sit back and sell regalia soon. I’m good. I want to grow hemp and make goat cheese. That’s my plan.

This spring, after gathering on the White Earth Indian Reservation in northwestern Minnesota and then in Colorado, tribal “hempsters” are working toward a renaissance of the plant that once clothed much of Europe and North America. Tribal hemp growers from the Meskwaki, Lakota, Menominee, Mandan, Hidatsa, Colville and other Native nations are planting the seeds of a new economy—responding with an innovative and holistic approach to the many challenges Native and non-Native communities face.